


every last thing you just said (amazing)

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Ahch-To, Ahsoka Tano Lives, Family, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Force Ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi, Force Ghosts, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Gen, Jedi Finn, Jedi Rey, Millennium Falcon - Freeform, Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, New Jedi Order, Obi-Wan Needs a Hug, Original Trilogy as History, Philosophy, Prequel Trilogy As History, Teaching, The Dark Side of the Force, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-26 13:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14402907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Five Jedi who taught Rey something, and one who didn't.





	1. Luke

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to serceleste for the beta. :D

Luke’s first lessons were not ones Rey took on. They talked past each other in their respective desperation and bitterness; Rey made mistakes, was fooled and cursed, and Luke hid away in austere shame. He wouldn't even go down to see Chewbacca, and Chewbacca, waiting for a hint of remorse for Luke’s abandonment of General Organa and Han, would not come up to him.

 

Rey persisted. She hunted the porgs - she couldn’t ever remember having so much fresh protein in her life - annoyed the nuns, mostly by accident, and tried to learn. There were a few exercises General Organa had shown her before she left, and Ahch-To was steeped in the Force. Rey could feel it. Or at least, she could feel _something_.

 

On Jakku there were sand diggers - limbless creatures that tunnelled beneath the loose and shifting dunes, the size of a cruiser, with no teeth, sightless eyes and a taste for blood. You learned to sense the tremble of their movements and flee for the ruins, where they couldn’t sense you; you learned to wait for safety.

 

You couldn't wait out the Force.

 

This is part of me, Rey told herself, I can’t fear it, and followed the faintly discernible currents in the air, all the way to the mosaic.

 

This, of all the things, was what made Luke angry - truly angry, not merely snappish and irritated. A storm howled in Rey’s ears as he shouted at her and the pressure rose in the cavern, and for the first time Rey saw in the grimy, bitter hermit the power that General Organa wore quiescent, like a cloak. It raged around Luke as he screamed, and Rey was afraid.

 

When he left she sat down and stared into the still pool, its mosaic of balance shimmering under the ripples left by Luke's disturbance as they lapped against the walls, smaller and smaller until they faded away.

 

In moments, the pool was as calm as before. She dipped a hand in and swirled it; the water rilled around her fingertips, and then when she lifted them out, it smoothed into a perfectly mirror-flat surface.

 

Rey looked up at the natural arch over the cliff, out at the grey sky over a boundless sea. She let her breath  even out and her gaze drift into the fine line of the far-off horizon.

 

The Force surrounded her, a mirror-flat pool in which her movements were only ripples, brief disturbances that moved the surface for moments.

 

She thought of Luke Skywalker, cursing the arrogance of the belief that the Force needed the Jedi to bring balance.

 

Well, Rey thought, he obviously isn't _wrong_.

 

She should have despaired at the idea that she was here for nothing. That the map, and Finn’s defection, and Poe Dameron’s suffering had been for nothing. That General Organa would be let down yet again.

 

Why not despair? she asked herself. If believing I can change anything is only arrogance?

 

It took some time for her to reach a conclusion. The sun had briefly peeped from behind the clouds, and was sidling towards the sea, when she spoke out loud, trying the words on for size.

 

“It's arrogant to believe I'm needed to change the balance, because… because the Force doesn't need a Jedi to do that. It could be anyone. The Force is in everything.”

 

She heard her words echo, and tentatively concluded that they weren't as stupid as they might have been.

 

“But,” Rey said, carefully examining these words too, “doing nothing is just giving in. The Force doesn't need me as a Jedi. It needs me as a being. Just like it needs Chewbacca, or Finn, or - or the porgs. Being a Jedi is just - how I do something. Instead of nothing.”

 

Her eyes focussed, and she blinked.

 

“Does that make sense?” she asked herself, tentative, and then a frightening certainty welled through and around her, filling the cavern. The water of the pool trembled and was still.

 

“Right,” Rey said in a small, thready voice. She got up and left carefully. She did not run.

 

Sanddiggers sensed you quicker and killed you faster if you ran.


	2. Yoda

There was nothing quite as steep and dark, in Rey's immediate experience, as Ahch-To during a night storm. Without the landmarks from Jakku or the faint glow of the unsafe parts of the ruins, she was blinded; Ahch-To's unfamiliar steep paths, slick with rain and echoing with the thunder, were treacherous. She felt claustrophobic and panicked, each flash of lightning shredding her nerves, the terror of not knowing where she was placing her feet making her twitch with anxiety as she tried to inch her way back to the empty hut she had been using. It was strange to be so completely unaware of her surroundings. Strange and unnerving.

 

She realised eventually that she had walked some distance from the hut she'd been sleeping in, and had reached the clearing marked by the tree where the sacred texts were held. If it was a tree. It looked as if it had turned to stone with age and the pounding of the rain.

 

Rey, soaked to the bone, freezing cold, and completely over her early fascination with regular falling water, groaned aloud. The sound was swallowed up by the storm, and yet apparently someone heard her: Rey distinctly heard the critical tap of a stick, and then the words -

 

“Dissuaded, you are?”

 

Rey shrieked. This was lost in a clap of thunder. She scrambled to turn and face the person who had addressed her, slipped on the slick paving, and fell. No clap of thunder was going to efface that.

 

She took a shuddering breath and briefly considered pulling a blaster on the apparition before her, but then noted that he was blue, insubstantial and half a metre off the ground. If he was a ghost a blaster wasn’t likely to do much except put another hole in a building, and patching up the first one had been a sufficiently long and embarrassing endeavour. She kept her hands away from her blaster, and decided to try not to antagonise him.

 

“Surprised, you should not be,” the ghost said, tapping his stick on a nonexistent floor. “Sensed the undercurrents in this place before, you did.”

 

Rey stared at him for several long moments. She remembered the sand-digger feeling, and blinked water out of her eyes.

 

“I - I thought that was the Dark Side. And they - didn’t feel like you.”

 

“No,” the ghost said. “They were of the Light. Known the Sith, this place has not. But they were not kind. Wise to sense that, you were.”

  
Rey stared at him.

 

“Impatient of slow learners, yes,” the ghost continued. “Heedless of the inexperienced, yes. Powerful and thoughtless of others. Poor guides for a padawan with no teacher.”

 

“Not for lack of trying,” Rey muttered. She sneezed.

 

“Persistent you are,” the ghost approved. “Deserve that, Skywalker does.” He cackled, high and joyous, and Rey felt a confused smile flicker over her face. “And get out of the rain, you ought to.”  
  


“I need to get back to my hut,” she said, and sneezed again.

 

“Shelter closer you will find,” the ghost said, pointing his stick at the sacred tree.

 

“But that’s holy,” Rey said. “And I’m… wet.”

 

“A little water hurt it will not,” the ghost said firmly, hobbling towards the sacred tree with surprising speed. “Come along.”

 

Puzzled, Rey followed.

 

Inside the tree’s hollow core, with its small stone shelf of books, the storm was less overwhelming. Once the curtain had fallen back across the doorway Rey felt less assaulted by flashes of light and whipping rain, and the noise was duller. It was also warmer. Rey had never been truly cold in her life until Starkiller, and she did not appreciate it.

 

The ghost sat down several feet off ground level. Rey sat down on the floor.

 

“Who are you?” she said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

 

He cackled again. “Better manners than young Skywalker you have.” He paused briefly. “Either of them. Although kind to them, I was not.”  
  


“You’re kind to me,” Rey said.

 

“Maybe,” the ghost said. “Maybe.” He sighed visibly, and said: “Yoda, my name was, when I lived.”

 

Rey blinked. She knew that name: General Organa had mentioned it. Luke Skywalker’s teacher, passing on Luke’s lessons with his last breath, nine hundred years old and full of wisdom. “I’m honoured,” she said softly.

 

“No,” Yoda said. “It is I who am honoured.”

 

Rey stared at him. “Why?”

 

He said nothing for a long moment. Rey occupied herself in wringing out her clothes as much as she could while still wearing them.

 

“I have been given chances,” Yoda said eventually. “Deserved them I have not. But unimportant, deserving is. Care about that, the Force does not. Capability. Now that is important.” He rearranged his room. “A chance this is, for me to teach. A teacher I was always, though I did not always teach good things.”  
  
Rey frowned.

 

“True, it is. Know, you would not. There you were not. Many years before you were born - and before your teacher was born.”

 

“He won’t teach me,” Rey said, and rubbed her face. “No matter what I say to him. I’m trying.”

 

 “And said I did, that deserve that he does. No. I spoke not of him. The woman, I meant. Leia Organa.”

 

“She says there isn’t much she can teach me.”

 

“Wrong, she is, or modest.” Yoda braced his hands on his stick. “But true it is that different lessons she can teach. Feared her anger as I did her brother’s, I did, and train her I would not; what she learned she taught herself, or created. A leader of men, Anakin Skywalker was, and so too his daughter - a dangerous trait. A leader Luke may be. But his lifeblood it is not.”

 

Rey snorted. “His lifeblood seems to be bitterness. Ow!”

 

She hadn’t thought a ghost stick could sting, but her ankles suggested otherwise.

 

“Grieved much, Luke has. Lost much, Luke has. He felt his purpose destroyed. Know that pain, I do, and I hope you never will.”

 

Rey rubbed the stinging patch. “Fair,” she said. “So… I won’t learn from Luke.”

 

“Say that I did not,” Yoda corrected. “Many teachers you will have. A genius it does not take to know that. Our knowledge is scattered.”  
  
“Well.” Rey sighed, and scratched at one of her armwraps. “I am a scavenger.”

 

“Good! Good.” Yoda laughed again, high and gleeful. “Despair you do not.”

 

“I don’t have a choice,” Rey pointed out, and was roundly ignored as Yoda rose to his feet and made his way briskly over to the shelf. He poked the books until they fell over.

 

“Take these you should.”  
  


“I can’t read,” Rey pointed out. “Well, not Aurebesh. Scavenge sign -”

 

“Learn you can,” Yoda said. “Useful, you will find them. But right, they will not always be. Learn to understand the difference, you must.”

 

“It’ll take months to learn to read,” Rey said, letting her hand drop. “I need someone who’s done this before. To help me understand.”  
  


“The past will not always be your guide,” Yoda said. There was a sadness and acceptance to his words that made Rey curious, but it felt like an unstable armoury in a ruined warship. Potentially profitable and definitely dangerous. “Seek to give you the tools to make your own guide, I do. Already here is everything you need.” He touched Rey’s forehead very lightly with one wizened claw. She felt it, just about.

 

“But,” she began, and then stopped.

 

“Look to the future,” Yoda instructed. “Keep the books.”

 

Rey hid them on the _Millennium Falcon_ the next morning.


	3. Leia

Between the porgs and the Resistance, the _Falcon_ was stuffed to the waste vents. Rey made herself a bed in the medical bay where she could watch over Finn (and Rose, who seemed to have taken over the difficult task of keeping Finn from leaping headfirst into danger and therefore required care, and Poe, who was wearing thin at the edges and who was Finn’s favourite and therefore deserved her attention). She rolled it out when everyone else had gone to sleep, or at least slowed down and switched to night-time duties. She packed it away again when she heard the first stirrings of movement in the ship, waking her from her uneasy sleep. It formed a sort of daily rhythm, since Rey no longer had a sun cycle to help her there; it was more natural than the _Falcon_ ’s sleep/wake lighting, which seemed to be permanently stuck on Hosnian Prime time.

 

The trouble was that everything was so _loud_. People made _noise_. They moved and spoke and cried and stubbed their toes and flew the ship and sparred in the cargo bay and had sex in the smuggling compartments. And they had thoughts and feelings, and now that Rey knew some of what she was capable of, she couldn’t escape any of it. She felt crushed by guilt and grief and fear, and was in possession of several pieces of information she didn’t want. She slept through everyone else’s dreams, fighting Phasma in Finn’s body, facing the accusations of the Resistance’s lost in Poe’s X-wing. She preferred that to the possibility of Kylo Ren slipping into her nightmares, but it wasn’t restful.

 

Three days in, if you went by the sleep/wake lighting, Rey heard Kaydel sobbing into Poe’s shoulder from the other side of the _Falcon_ , and felt a blinding headache set in. She leapt to her feet, tripped over a loose strap on the cockpit floor, and caught herself.

 

“I need a moment,” she said, tucking the strap back in, which needed to be done for reasons of common sense but was also essential because it hid her face from Chewbacca, who was rumbling ominously. She pretended not to have heard his question as she hurried out.

 

There were reusable coolpacks in the medical bay. She took two of those, and her bedding, and hurried on until she got to a smuggling compartment she thought only Chewbacca knew about. Before a porg could squawk an alert or someone could come round a corner, she let herself in and pulled the panel closed behind her, scrunching her bedding into the corners until she had a comfortable place to lie, and activating both coolpacks to lay them over her temples.

 

Her headache didn’t improve, and was now coloured by flurries of questions and worry - _did you see Rey run out of the cockpit? She looked awful. What’s wrong with her? Not again, kriffing Jedi_ \- lapping over her, panicking and nauseating, in addition to the neverending dull thud of misery, shame, pain, loss -

 

The panel popped open and light flooded in. Rey made an anatomically improbable remark in Huttese, and was surprised when the answering voice was low, husky and Alderaanian, rather than a curt Shriywook snarl.

 

“My brother was a bantha-brained idiot,” General Organa said.

  
Rey would have stared at her, but that would have involved opening her eyes.

 

“He never taught you to shield, did he?”

 

“What’s shielding?” Rey said.

 

General Organa heaved an enormous sigh. “When did you last sleep properly?”

  

“Um.”

 

General Organa said something in Alderaanian which sounded rude. “Take these.” She uncurled Rey’s fingers and pressed two tablets into the sweaty centre of her palm. “They always worked on me. Chew them and sleep. We’ll talk about what shielding is when you wake up.”

 

Rey crunched the tablets between her teeth, and winced at the bitter powder in her mouth. She felt a heaviness overtaking her almost immediately, though, and a pleasant torpor taking over her mind. The General touched her forehead lightly, and ran a hand soothingly over her messy hair. It was almost a motherly touch, except Rey doubted the mother Kylo Ren had described to her had ever bothered with such a thing.

 

Best of all, the heavy press of others’ emotions was lifting from her, and she felt so light and insubstantial without it it was easy to float into sleep.

 

 _That’s it_ , General Organa said quietly. _That’s better_.

 

Rey fell into so deep a sleep that she didn’t notice the panel going back on.

 

When she woke, everything was strangely quiet – as quiet as it had been on Ahch-To, in its simplest moments. She opened the panel and found that someone had laid down a rollout mattress for the General in the corridor outside, which she was sitting on, legs stretched out comfortably, back straight against the wall with a cushion at her lower back for support, and eyes closed. She looked very peaceful.

 

Rey was very careful not to drop the panel, though she wasn’t sure if General Organa was sleeping. Her presence felt live, despite its serenity.

 

“Meditation,” General Organa said, without opening her eyes. “And shielding. I’m shielding you right now.”

 

Rey remembered this being mentioned at some point during the previous night, when she was too much of a mess to respond properly. No-one had talked about it before; she had a vague idea of shields like a cruiser’s, projected around the ship as protection –

 

“You can do that,” General Organa said aloud, “but for most purposes, you’ll find it’s not very helpful. Different visualisations work for different people in different situations. I find that kind of shielding helpful in a physical sense – when I need to protect myself from physical attack. That’s not the sort of shielding you need to learn, not just yet.”

 

Rey set the panel down very carefully and sat on the edge of the smuggling compartment, legs dangling. “Can it make everyone shut up?”

 

“No.” General Organa opened her eyes. “I understand the temptation, but sentients are allowed to be loud, and irritating, and messy, and impossible.” She quirked an eyebrow at Rey. “What you need to change is how much of it you can hear at any one time. Finn seems to have learned how to do that in self-defence, but I imagine you weren’t often packed in with a lot of other people on Jakku. And Luke obviously didn’t realise you would need to be taught.”

 

Rey digested this. “How quickly can I learn it?”  


The other eyebrow went up. “I don’t know, Rey. How fast do you learn? It does take practice.”

 

“I can practise,” Rey assured her. “If it means not – not –”

 

She thought of the maelstrom of other people’s minds she’d been caught in, and General Organa nodded, evidently aware of what Rey was feeling.

 

“Where do I start?” Rey asked. 

  
“By finding peace in chaos,” General Organa said, and smiled soft and bittersweet. “That’s what my first teacher told me.”

 

Rey swallowed. “Okay.” She straightened her back and rested her hands in her lap. She thought of working in the hull of an unstable ship or cleaning a sand-choked detonator in the middle of a crowded, jostling workshop. _Peace in chaos_. “I can do that.”

 

“Yes,” General Organa said, still smiling. “Yes, you can.”


	4. Anakin

Rey’s hands were trembling in a way no activity would soothe when the ghost caught them and held them. She almost screamed, but her throat was raw from yelling and running and she was too exhausted to produce much more than a dry squeak of panic.

 

 _It’s all right_ , the ghost said, without breaking the imperfect silence of the safe house. Rey’s ears still strained to catch sounds from the next room, where the medics General Organa’s contact had found on Coruscant were working on Poe. _I won’t hurt you._

 

The clasp of his hands wasn’t real, wasn’t warm or solid, and if Rey thought about it she knew there was nothing there. But so long as she wasn’t looking at her hands she could still feel a firm, grounding grip on them.

 

Rey treated him to a burst of foul Huttese that made a grin quirk at his wide thin mouth. _Nothing about this is all right!_

_No, I know. But you’re not dying. Your friend is not dying. Your cause is not dying._ The ghostly grip on Rey’s hands tightened slightly. _Stop. Breathe._

 

Rey forced herself to take in a measured gulp of air, hold it for eight seconds, and then let it go.

_Good. Now again._

 

Rey repeated her actions, and felt the storm within her settle to a manageable roar. Several small items around the room which had been quivering in their places settled.

 

 _Better_ , the ghost said, and did not let go of her hands. He had a confident, wry smile, and it used only half his mouth. _Who are you?_

 

 _Rey_ , she said. _Just Rey._

 

 _I’m Anakin,_ he said.

 

_Skywalker?_

 

That mobile mouth twisted, and he nodded. He squeezed her hands gently, and then let go.

 

In the other room, there was a low murmur of activity; tense voices, the whirring of droids’ movement. She folded her arms, and let movement carry her to the window. They were on a mid-level of Coruscant; high enough to be classy, low enough to be nondescript. Rey didn’t much admire it. She felt the need for a little more sky.

 

 _Why are you here?_ she asked.

 

 _I grew up here_ , he answered. _Well. A few miles away_.

 

 _The Jedi Temple_ , Rey said.

 

He nodded. His eyes fell to the floor, and they were silent for a long time.

 

Rey sat down on the window seat, and, with some difficulty, rearranged her legs so she could sit cross-legged facing the window and meditate. Anakin stood just far away enough to avoid unnerving her, staring out of the window she was looking through. Rey closed her eyes and anchored herself.

 

She knew at once when Rose entered the room, and also that it was not bad news. She found her eyes were open when she turned to look up at Rose, standing next to her, slightly closer than Anakin Skywalker and seriously interfering with his ghostly personal space. There were teapots more Force-sensitive than Rose Tico, so it was very unlikely that she knew she was standing in the middle of Anakin Skywalker’s right leg.

 

Rey tried not to laugh at the look on his face.

 

“Poe’s going to be all right,” Rose said. Rey allowed herself to smile. “They said he’ll sleep for a while.”

 

Rey smiled more broadly.

 

“You should sleep too,” Rose said, almost tentative. “I know you’re – Jedi-ing, but…”

 

“How can you tell?”

 

“There’s a look you get on your face.” Rose touched Rey’s shoulder lightly. “I’m going to go take a look at that skiff, if you need me. They messed up the back vents pretty good.”

 

Rey nodded. “Thanks for coming to tell me.”

 

Rose’s footsteps echoed all the way down the corridor. Rey ducked her head and pleated the edge of her stupid Jedi robe, specially made up for these covert negotiations and based on a holo Rey was tempted to ask Artoo to corrupt out of spite. It had too many heavy layers for her liking and she kept standing on the edge. She grimaced absent-mindedly, shrugging her shoulders into it.

 

 _It’s not historically accurate_ , Anakin informed her. _Those are formal robes. Most people preferred something with that shape, but more practical. Only the stuffiest Masters wore full robes all the time._ A slight pause. _Well. And Obi-Wan._

 

Rey said nothing.

 

 _Are you feeling better?_ Anakin asked. _More balanced?_

 

Rey swallowed _. I’m worried._

_Why?_

_Because fear leads to the Dark Side._

 

 _Yes_ , Anakin said. He folded his arms _. Move up._

 

 _You’re a ghost, you don’t need to sit down_ , Rey said, too tired to be nice. She rubbed her eye sockets with the heels of her palms, and belatedly noticed a glancing blaster burn on one wrist. She wrapped it in the matching singed sleeve, and tried not to sigh.

 

Anakin appeared in front of her, outside the window. She almost fell backwards, and he laughed.

 

Rey swore at him.

 

 _Sorry_ , he said, clearly not meaning it in the slightest.

 

Rey set her jaw and glared at him.

 

 _I have something to pass on about fear_ , he offered. He had settled himself into the same cross-legged shape she sat in, and made it so that their eyes were on a level. _So you can learn from my mistakes._

 

She raised her eyebrows at him. _Redeeming yourself?_  
  


_That would be a longer road than you can possibly imagine_ , he said, matter-of-fact, and not – when Rey came to think of it – really an answer. She didn’t question him.

 

 _Fear is dangerous for what it makes you do_ , Anakin said. _Not for what it is._

 

She took the words in and mulled them over. _I’m listening._

 

The skin round his eyes crinkled. _I know._

_What did you fear?_

_Many things_ , Anakin said briefly, and then, when she thought he wouldn’t elaborate – _Losing my wife and children in death. Losing my brother in anger. Losing my purpose in disgrace._

 

 _Things you were attached to_ , Rey said, thoughtfully. _Why the Jedi forbade attachment. Because you can’t fear losing things you are not afraid to lose._

 

Anakin nodded.

 

 _But everyone’s afraid of something_. It was a lesson the Jedi might not have had occasion to learn, well-fed and well-supplied in the heart of the Old Republic, but Rey had grown to adulthood walking hand in hand with starvation and death.

 

 _The Council_ , Anakin said, _was afraid of me._

  
Rey arched her eyebrows again. _Are you saying their actions were Dark?_

 

 _I’m saying their fear led them to act on their impulses_ , Anakin replied, plainly restraining himself. _With suspicion, rather than justice._  

 

Rey thought of Finn, who would always be a stormtrooper, and the things that meant for him and for those around him. She nodded slowly.

 

 _I saw my son Fall,_ Anakin said. _Not once but twice. And I saw him rise again._

 

Rey’s head jerked up so quickly that the tendons in her neck burnt. _Luke Fell?_

 

Anakin nodded. _On the second Death Star, driven by the Emperor, in fear that his sister and the Rebellion would be destroyed. But in the course of the fight he realised what he was doing and found another way._

 

In Rey’s mind’s eye she saw something she had never witnessed. A darkened throne room and a wizened old man draped in black; another man, wearing a heavy life support suit and a long black cloak, and one younger than either of them, with dark blonde hair and a green blade, duelling the man in the support suit. He was winning, driven by fury; and then he stripped a hand from the man in the suit and hesitated, for a long horrible moment. And then, to Rey’s shock, he threw the blade away.

 

He said something, but she couldn’t hear it.

 

 _I am a Jedi_ , Anakin said very softly, pulling her back to the present day. _Like my father before me. That’s what he said._

 

Luke, Rey realised, Luke young and desperate and powerful.

 

 _And the second time?_ she asked, grateful that telepathy meant her voice could not waver.

 

 _You have already seen it,_ Anakin said, and then pulled a hilariously awful face. _From a certain point of view._

 

Rey stifled a wholly inappropriate giggle, and he smiled back at her, seemingly pleased to have found some laughter in her.

 

 _There was Darkness in Ben_ , Anakin said, and frowned, back to seriousness as quickly as Rey herself. _Snoke brought it out in him as Palpatine brought it out in me. You can turn anything to the Darkness with the right tools._

 

_Not General Organa._

 

Anakin smiled again, small and sad and very proud. _Leia makes that choice every day she breathes. It’s not that she cannot be turned. It’s that she will not._

 

There was a pause, and then Anakin returned to his teaching.

 

_Luke raised his lightsaber to Ben because he saw a vision that might have come to pass. Because he saw Ben’s anger and knew Ben’s lack of control. But also because he was himself afraid. Snoke didn’t just act on Ben. He inspired fear in Luke as well, through attacks on New Order outposts, threats to Leia and Han and others, things that came too close to be ignored – and other means. Luke and Leia couldn’t protect Ben. It never occurred to Luke or Leia that Luke would not be able to protect himself, or that none of us would be able to do it for them. Or even warn them. At first, Snoke was… subtle._

Rey scraped her teeth over her lower lip, mind reeling.

_Leia was not affected,_ Anakin continued, _not in the same way. Leia does not know just how good she is at shielding or just how early those lessons were taught to her. Because she was so young, she can’t repeat them, only reconstruct them. A lot has been lost._

 

Rey rubbed her temples and pinched the bridge of her nose. _I can’t take all this in at once._

  
He leaned forward, through the windowpane, and flicked her wrist with two careless fingers. _You don’t need to. It will take time._

 

_Do I have time?_

 

 _Yes_ , Anakin said. His voice left no room for doubt. She wrinkled her nose at him.

 

He looked up before she did, and a few moments later Rey sensed General Organa’s presence – those impenetrable shields.

 

“What are you doing here?” General Organa said, not hostile but not friendly.

  
Rey, realising that this was not aimed at her, did not answer.

 

 _I had something to tell Rey_ , Anakin said. _About fear._ He rose to his feet. _I was just leaving._

 

General Organa did not respond. She watched as Anakin bowed before her, expression remote, amber eyes unblinking.

 

Rey shifted to sit sideways in the window seat, left side pressed against the transparency. She twisted her fingers in her lap and looked at nothing in particular.

 

“I don’t know how much freedom of movement you have,” General Organa said eventually, as if the words had been pulled from her. “But if you can – Finn’s hunting assassins somewhere on this Hutt-swiving planet. I’d appreciate it if someone could keep an eye on him. I can’t be everywhere.”

 

Anakin nodded, and was gone.

 

“I hope he was at least helpful,” General Organa said, into the ensuing silence.

 

“I don’t know yet,” Rey said. She looked down at her hands. “I think so.”


	5. Ahsoka

Rey had been expecting an ambush. There wasn’t one. She almost fell over her own feet in reaction, staring wildly around the alleyway.

 

A figure moved in the shadows, and Rey lifted her lightsaber.

 

“Your form is better than I expected,” commented the figure, stepping out into the light. Their cloak hung over high horns or montrals, and their voice was light, but had something of the timbre of General Organa’s – old and patient and knowing. “You’re not here to make friends, are you?”

 

“I wasn’t expecting to find friends,” Rey said, without lowering her lightsaber. “Who are you?”

 

“An old friend of your General’s,” said the figure. She put back her hood and smiled. Predator’s teeth, bright blue eyes, a weathered orange and white face: Togruta, but not one Rey knew. “She’ll be pleased to see me. But not as pleased as she will be to see you. I take it you sent your students home?”

 

Rey lifted her head slightly. Jas and Orlà had been in a Resistance-affiliated convoy which had been attacked; Rey had gone in to retrieve them, knowing that the convoy would be safe as soon as they were gone and aware that they couldn’t afford to lose allies or supplies any more than they could afford to lose the two young Force-sensitives, and had found them separated from the convoy and fighting for their lives. As big a prize as two Jedi students would have been, Rey herself was a bigger one, and it had not been difficult to draw away the stormtroopers and send Jas and Orlà to Chewbacca for exfiltration. Getting off the planet was obviously going to be a little bit harder.

 

“They’re not here, if that’s what you mean. What did you do with the ambush?”

 

“Have you got time for that question?”

 

Rey could now hear as well as sense the pursuit. “Not really.”

 

“Well then.”

 

The Togruta ran as fast as she did, despite the all-encompassing cloak and her evident age, and Rey found that surprisingly few blaster bolts came their way. They all seemed to be poorly aimed, which didn’t square with her experience of troopers, and the air support was never in the right place. Rey kept her hand close to her lightsaber and half an eye on the Togruta’s movements, but she wasn’t being led anywhere specific, let alone into another trap. The Togruta’s Force presence was warm, friendly and strong, but Rey didn’t see her use the Force, not once, and there was nothing about her that felt deceitful.

 

Also, Rey thought (killing a trooper, burning through a gate, stealing a ship, pushing a wall out of the way of some civilians, burning a hole in the airborne pursuit with the guns, flying by the skin of her teeth into the _Falcon_ ’s cargo bay just before it broke atmosphere and the stolen skimmer became useless) the Force was _singing_.

 

“I’ll make sure General Organa knows you’re here,” Rey said, climbing out of the skimmer and waving a hand at Jas, who was bouncing on their toes at the edge of the cargo bay and plainly very agitated. Her head was aching – the skimmer wasn’t rated for the heights they’d been flying at – but a little quality time with an oxygen tank would fix that. The Togruta didn’t seem bothered. “Who should I say it is?”

 

The Togruta smiled. “Fulcrum.”

 

Rey went up to the medical bay and asked Jas to call it in to Finn on her way. After that, things got a bit out of hand.

 

“What’s happening?” Rey demanded, sliding into the cockpit with squeaking shoes and the oxygen tank wedged under one arm. She had discovered from the repeated jerk in her stomach that the _Falcon_ had dropped out of hyperspace, changed course sharply, and punched back into hyperspace, and she had absolutely no idea why.

 

Chewbacca laughed and told her happily that it was classified.

 

Rey drew on her recently acquired Mando’a to tell him to go and burn his balls off, and retired to the medical bay to question Finn, resident on the Resistance’s stronghold ship _Rogue One_ and attached to the fledgling Intel operation regrouping under General Organa’s eye. Finn did not know what was going on either, but he did know that Kaydel Ko Connix was running around like a malfunctioning mouse droid.

 

Rey was not sure how this was relevant. She checked on Jas and Orlà briefly – Jas, a wary teenaged Besalisk, had buried themselves in ensuring Fulcrum’s comfort and cleaning the kitchen, while Orlà, a mostly-Twi’lek from Saleucami, was playing sabacc for points with Fulcrum and cheating scandalously – and went back to her bunk to sleep. The next thing she knew, Poe was calling to her to wake up from the edge of the cabin, and she had a meeting with General Organa in twenty minutes.

 

“Finn says bring your lightsaber,” Poe added.

 

“Did he say why?” Rey yelled from the fresher, splashing her face with water.

 

“Nope!”

 

It was not a large meeting – General Organa, Finn, General Calrissian, Chewbacca, a few people Rey didn’t know by sight - but it did include Fulcrum. Rey wondered why.

 

“Good morning,” Rey said, letting herself into the theoretical conference room and wondering where the table had gone. The chairs were on the edges of the room, and there were fewer than she might have expected. General Organa, General Calrissian and Chewbacca were the only ones sitting down, and Finn looked confused.

 

Rey caught his eye. He shook his head slightly. His instincts were bothering him – whether that had anything to do with the Force or not was an old argument – but he didn’t know why. And he wasn’t visibly armed, though Rey knew he wouldn’t be defenceless.

 

“Does that lightsaber have a training mode?” Fulcrum enquired. She was still wearing that all-encompassing cloak, though the hood was down.

 

“No,” Rey said. “I haven’t worked out how to make one yet. Focussing the crystals was hard enough.”

 

“Never mind,” Fulcrum said generously. “Defend yourself.”

 

“ _What_ –” Rey began, but the new impulse to swear before fighting was only a thin veneer over her instinct for self-defence, and she had her lightsaber flaring into life before Fulcrum dropped her cloak and the first of two blazing white blades flashed towards her nose.

 

After that it was just fighting for her life. Rey was later informed that General Calrissian had been pleased to win a small private bet on her surviving more than five minutes, but that didn’t improve her panic when she found herself flat on her back with a lightsaber poised just between her eyes, its heat singeing her eyebrows. Her own lightsaber had flown across the room nanoseconds before.

 

 _Finn_! she cried, panicked.

 

“Don’t try it,” Fulcrum recommended. If she strained Rey could just see the second saber, held to defend Fulcrum against a bolt from Finn’s holdout blaster. “You’re both good. But you’re not as good as me yet.”

 

“I think that’s enough,” General Organa said, mildly but clearly.

 

Both the white lightsabers snapped into nothing. Rey scrambled to her feet, and put her back to the wall and Finn at her right shoulder. He had only half lowered his blaster.

 

“Who _are_ you?” she demanded.

 

“Fulcrum,” Fulcrum said, very simply.

 

General Organa stirred and shook her head. “They won’t know that one.”  


Fulcrum tilted her head. “As you like, Leia.”

 

General Organa rolled her eyes. “Ahsoka Tano, Rey. Her name used to be – is sometimes - Ahsoka Tano.”

 

The name struck Rey like the first rain of the season. She opened her mouth and closed it again.

 

“But you’re a _legend_ ,” Finn said, blaster dropping all the way. “You fought in the Clone Wars. You survived the Purge. You were the first spy of the Rebel Alliance – you saved hundreds of Force-sensitive children and adults –”

 

“Eighty-three,” Ahsoka Tano corrected. Her eyes went sad and distant for a moment. “I only wish it were hundreds.”

 

Rey pulled in a breath and then another and wondered why none of them were accompanied by words.

 

“You fought Darth Vader to a draw!” Finn said. “You survived his prison! And escaped! And went back to work as a spy in the Outer Rim! You broke slave rings with Luke Skywalker!”

 

“It was more complicated than that makes it sound,” Tano said, weary, but smiling.   

 

“You’re amazing,” Rey said, finding her words at last, and then – “you must be _ancient_.”

 

“The Force is with me,” Tano said, dry as Jakku. “Sometimes too much so.”

 

Rey summoned her lightsaber and stuck it through her belt. She scratched her head and tried not to ask why Tano was still alive.

 

Going by General Organa’s slight sigh and the widening of Tano’s predator grin, she was not doing a good job of keeping a mental lid on that one.

 

“Life is full of surprises,” Ahsoka Tano said. “You’ll see.”  



	6. Obi-Wan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are loved.

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s hermitage had been stripped a long time ago, but it was still shelter, and they needed that, Finn and Rey and Rose and their small huddle of students. The Resistance was close, but Poe had said – with a sharp edge of regret – that they wouldn’t be close enough for another thirty standard hours.

 

At least it hadn’t been fear in his voice. They’d made up enough ground in this war that three students, two half-grown Jedi and one very practical engineer could survive alone on Tatooine’s surface for thirty hours longer than planned. The First Order wouldn’t find them right away: they wouldn’t even know where to look. Finn had persuaded Hux’s intelligencers that the party of semi-Jedi was going to Ilum for lightsaber crystals, with General Organa and in deadly secrecy. They did have the deadly secrecy thing down, but they had left General Organa carrying out highly deniable diplomacy somewhere totally different. And they had preferred Tatooine over Ilum because it was in the Tatooine Free System rather than Order-controlled space, and because – while half the galaxy knew that Ilum and Jedha held lightsaber crystals – the only living people in the galaxy who knew Luke Skywalker had made his second lightsaber from crystals found on Tatooine were Wedge Antilles, Lando Calrissian and Leia Organa. None of whom were likely to talk.

 

Finn was on tenterhooks waiting for the First Order to discover his carefully crafted ambush just outside Ilum’s orbit, but that excitement could wait until they had more secure access to the HoloNet. Kenobi’s hideout had been easy to clear and make habitable enough for temporary living, but it didn’t boast a proper HoloNet hookup. Rey, looking over the building with a scavenger’s eye, thought it had probably been ripped out decades ago, after the hermitage was abandoned.

 

She changed places with Rose for her watch, smiling an acknowledgement at Rose as the engineer headed inside to get her share of the stew, and settled down in the shadows outside to watch the stars and listen for movement.

 

It had been a successful trip. They had found the crystals in the Jundland Wastes, where  General Organa had told them they would, the Force had led Rey, Finn and their students to a selection of crystals, Rose had only had to shoot one womp rat and administer first aid to one sunburned student, and their skiff had stayed in one piece. All things considered, an unplanned pause for reflection to accommodate a meteor shower was a very minor concern. No Knights of Ren had turned up to hunt the children or Rey, Finn and Rose – Rey winced and tapped her lightsaber for luck – they’d had little interest from either hostile wildlife or slightly less hostile locals, and they had shelter and food.

 

Rey sank into the Force, and allowed her senses to range out over the gullies and caverns of the Wastes, listening out for life.

 

She wasn’t surprised when, some time towards the end of her appointed watch, she sensed a presence that was neither aggressive or familiar. She opened her eyes, allowing her head to turn to one side as instinct demanded, and found herself looking at the blueish and insubstantial form of a human man in Jedi robes.

 

“Sorry for breaking and entering,” Rey said. “We needed somewhere to put the children for the night.”

 

The man smiled wryly. “Please, consider it forgotten,” he said, with a grave Old Republic courtesy that made everything seem small and inconsequential.

 

“You must be Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Rey said. It was difficult to look directly at him, in a way that it had not been difficult to look at Anakin Skywalker or Yoda. Both of those ghosts had taken a single form. Yoda had never chosen to be visibly younger, and Anakin Skywalker had never taken on the battered and terrifying shape of his last living years. Obi-Wan Kenobi, however, was slowly fading back and forward between a young man, solidly built and strong in pressed tunics, short beard and rich hair, and a thin, wasted elder with lank, thin hair and no beard to speak of, wrapped in a rough dark cloak. The solemn eyes did not change.

 

Kenobi nodded. “You must be Rey.”

 

“How do you know who I am?”

 

“You are an exceptionally bright eddy in the Force,” Kenobi said. “And I am one with the Force. Of course I know who you are.”

 

“Of course,” Rey repeated, disbelieving. She shook her head, and leaned back against the rough rock wall. “You were Luke’s teacher.”

 

“Yes. For a while.”  


“And Anakin’s.”  
  
There was a long pause.

 

“Yes,” Kenobi repeated. “For a while.”

 

Rey let the silence sit.

 

“I am not yours,” Kenobi said. “The Force does not will it. And I know I have nothing to teach you.”

 

Rey looked at him, disbelieving. “That makes no sense.”

 

“How so?” Kenobi enquired. He had shifted back to his younger face as he sat down next to her.

 

“You were one of the greatest Jedi Masters of the Old Republic. You survived the Purges. You were one of the most brilliant strategists of the Clone Wars – you fought in the Rebellion. I’m just a half-trained scavenger from nowhere. Surely -”

 

“As a Jedi,” Kenobi said, interrupting her so smoothly it didn’t feel rude, “my greatest strength was endurance and survival.”

 

Rey lost her breath.

 

“Oh,” she said finally, a few minutes later. “I know all about that.”

 

Kenobi nodded slowly. His smile was bittersweet. “I know you do.”

 

In the silence, Tatooine’s moon rose and travelled some distance across the sky. The sounds from the hermitage were muffled – the first thing their students had learned was how to be quiet, and Finn and Rose were most likely asleep – but the silence outside was so deafening that Rey heard every detail as the three settled down to sleep, Jas trying to accommodate a Besalisk’s limbs, Lile’kha complaining as someone caught one of her lekku by accident.

 

Underneath it all, Rey could feel the first thing that had struck her when she had entered the hermitage. Loneliness.

 

“I don’t care if you have something to teach me or not,” Rey said. “I appreciate the company.”

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi – dead forty years – smiled like the suns coming up.


End file.
